Television de Radio-Canada 

Télévision de Radio-Canada
Type Broadcast television network
Country Canada
Availability National (available in parts of northern U.S. via cable or antenna)
Owner Société Radio-Canada
Launch date September 6, 1952
Website
radio-canada.ca/television/

Télévision de Radio-Canada[1] is a Canadian French language television network. It is owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Headquarters are at Maison Radio-Canada in Montreal, which is also home to the network's flagship station, CBFT.

It is the only francophone network in Canada to broadcast over-the-air in all Canadian provinces, although its programming is generally directed at residents of Quebec as opposed to francophones outside Quebec. Indeed, until the 1970s, its only stations outside Quebec were in Ottawa and Winnipeg.

Generally considered more populist than its English counterpart CBC Television, this network has certainly been the more successful of the two, as it does not face such immense competition from American networks. For most of the last 30 years it has trailed TVA in the ratings, but has recently pulled closer with a resurgent schedule including offbeat sitcoms and talk show Tout le monde en parle.

With this success, however, have come accusations of dumbing down. Tout le monde en parle replaced the long-running Sunday night arts series Les Beaux Dimanches.

News programming is anchored by Le Téléjournal, which airs nightly at 10:00 p.m.; on weeknights it includes a current affairs segment, Le Point. Local newscasts, which air during the lunch and supper hours, now also carry the Téléjournal name, i.e. Le Téléjournal Montréal. Originally, the regional newscasts had the name Ce Soir (This Evening).

CBC/Radio-Canada also operates le Réseau de l'information (RDI), Canada's first French-language news channel.


On 10 September 2007, Radio-Canada (as well as sister cable news network RDI) became the first over-the-air network in North America to broadcast solely in 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, including on its standard definition signals.

See also List of programs broadcast by Télévision de Radio-Canada.

Contents

Radio-Canada HD

In 2006, Télévision de Radio-Canada launched an HD simulcast of its Montreal station CBFT which is available nationally via satellite and digital cable operators.

As of 2007, Radio-Canada is available in HD over-the-air in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City.

Stations and affiliates

See also: List of Radio-Canada television stations

Of Canada's three major French language television networks, Radio-Canada is the only one that broadcasts terrestrially in all Canadian provinces. With the exception of Atlantic Canada, where a single station serves all four provinces through an extensive network of rebroadcasters, the network has at least one originating station in every province. These stations serve every major market in French and English Canada, with privately owned affiliates serving smaller markets in Quebec.

Unlike CBC Television affiliates, which often have several alternative programming sources, Radio-Canada affiliates are effectively constrained to carry network programming throughout the day, excluding local and regional programming and commercials. Radio-Canada, in fact, maintained editorial control and branding of local news programming on virtually all stations in the network regardless of their nominal ownership.

In 2008, the network acquired three of its five remaining private affiliate stations in Quebec from their former owner, Cogeco.[2] Only the stations in Rouyn-Noranda and Rivière-du-Loup remain as private affiliates, rather than O&Os, of the network.

Slogans and branding

In television listings such as TV Guide, where space limitations usually require television networks to be referred to by a three-letter abbreviation, the network is normally coded as SRC (for Société Radio-Canada, the French language corporate name of the CBC as a whole.) This has no official standing as a name for the network — although the network did once experiment with using SRC as its on-air brand in the 1990s, it reverted to Radio-Canada within a few months.

Past slogans

Ombudsmen

The current ombudsman of Radio-Canada is Julie Miville-Dechêne, since April 1, 2007. She was preceded by Renaud Gilbert (2000–2007), Marcel Pépin (1997–1999), Mario Cardinal (1993–1997) and Bruno Gauron (1992).

Notes

  1. ^ Official name as stated in the CBC's annual reports and most press releases. Usually only Radio-Canada is used on-air (in both voiceovers and the logo), while Radio-Canada - Télévision is used for the network's logo in print.
  2. ^ CRTC Decision 2008-130.

External links